Needham & Company downgraded Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ: MLNX) from Buy to Hold on lack of visibility/clarity and lumpiness in the business model.

Analyst Glenn Hanus comments, "While we remain positive on MLNX's Infiniband /Ethernet technology and favorable prospects for its increasing presence in HPC and more recent verticals such as Web2.0, Cloud, storage, financials and database/datacenter, we are changing our rating to Hold (was Buy) on lack of visibility/clarity and lumpiness in the business model, reduced estimates and healthy current valuation relative to our revised expectations. We are finding it increasingly difficult to provide a ‘13/14 financial model with any conviction. We note that MLNX reported a solid 1Q at the high-end of guidance but issued 2Q modestly below Street. MLNX does expect some q/q revenue growth through ’13. We are reducing our ‘13/14 estimates as indicated."